Meryl Streep

I watched The Post last weekend. There are two things that I took away from that afternoon.

1. The movie began on an ordinary note and picked up at some point at the one-hour mark. And it only went up from there.

2. Meryl Streep blew my mind with her performance. I know there’s nothing that hasn’t already been said and established about her and her skills, but oh-my-god she brought out the core of her character, built over several decades, in just over an hour. Her body language and gestures and voice and expressions, packaged with great dialogues and Steven Spielberg’s direction left me with a massive lump in my throat. And it wasn’t a linear emotion of sadness. Her acting was so fantastically nuanced that I think I experienced empathy for a distraught woman, along with pride and joy for her and her decisions all at the same time. She subtly brought to life the journey and transformation of a woman who always founded her identity in family to someone who owned a room (and the screen) full of middle-aged white men ready to walk all over her.